Flash Of Normalcy
by crazytomboy78
Summary: Set during 'Mandarin's Quest'. A return to normalcy makes Tony experience one of the worst days of his life all over again, and he's not happy about it at all. One-shot, slight Pepperony.


When Tony's eyes flickered open, he saw his father sitting across from him. He was shocked. Where am I, what's going on?

"It...It was all just a dream..." Tony muttered. No. It couldn't have been a dream, it was too real. All the emotions had been felt to the most real extent. His life had impacted him so hardly, in such lifelike proportions.

Seeing his father alone sent his mind reeling; when he put his hand to his chest he didn't feel the presence of metal where his heart should be. My arc reactor...gone? Its absence made Tony feel alive again. It made him feel like he had regained that bit of humanity again and it felt good to be normal again. He didn't want to lose that...

"D-dad, you're alive?" Tony said, stuttering in disbelief.

"Always have been," Howard replied casually.

This can't be right, thought Tony. Everything's back to the way things used to be. My life feels normal again. Like none of that pain and heartache (some of it literal, too,) ever happened. But I know it did happen. All of this...all of it is too good to be true. I'm not that lucky for all of that to have been a dream. Something here is way wrong.

Then Tony recognized his surroundings. His breathing quickened and he became very nervous. He didn't like where they were one bit, he didn't like it at all. He remembered what was going to happen next, and he didn't want to endure that again. He remembered the armor was in the back and knew it was their only hope.

"No! This is the plane! Dad we have to get out of here!" Tony panicked, rushing to the back to get his armor. He cherished the ability to talk to his dad one more time, and he wanted to save him this time around. He didn't want to lose all that again. He realized that he missed something as simple as being able to call him dad again, to be able to have their usual back-and-forths as they did every day. He liked the return to normalcy that he had felt when he first opened his eyes. Like everything was okay, like no one was in danger at all, no one was in a coma and no one had ever been in harm's way. Everything was okay.

He knew it was too late, though, when he saw the flash of light blinding him. And suddenly everything happened all over again.

~...~

As Tony struggled to lift his head, he saw Trish flicker and fade away and Pepper appeared. In the stress of the moment when he saw defeat in his future, and had recently endured his father's disappearance once more, he felt relieved to see Pepper there.

"Don't let him win, Tony! Don't give up!" Pepper said in a panicked voice. Tony looked over to where she had knelt in front of him and something struck him then. Seeing Pepper there, moving him to fight on, made him want to get up more than ever and beat the snot out of everyone in that room (physically in the room, of course,) just because she wanted him to. Just because she depended on him to save the day and be the hero she knew him for, and he didn't want look like a failure or a loser in front of her. He saw the mix of emotions in her eyes and he knew that she was the best reason he could ever have to get up and beat everyone up. For her he would fight through this. It wasn't real, after all, it was all in his head.

So that's what he did. As Pepper faded back into Trish, Tony made it very clear that he designed the armor to save people and that they are not going to destroy him.

~...~

As Tony finally came back to his real body in the temple, the first thing he heard was Pepper.

"Tony, you did it you're okay!" She cheered. Tony smiled. That sense of motivation that he had gotten earlier suddenly filled him again and the sight of her smile sent his heart into a frenzy of beating; fast beating.

"Thanks to you, Pep," Tony responded. Pepper shot him a confused look.

"What? What did I do?" She asked.

"Oh, uh, it's a long story, I'll tell you later..." Tony answered, blushing.

As having a sense of motivation fill him, Tony went back to trying to make sense of what was going on so he could get them out of there. He shook everything out of his head. He got rid of the joy of seeing his dad again, of seeing everything back to normal again and moved on to find out what was happening.

**Sorry if that was a weird place to end, but I had this document sitting on my cpu for a while and finally got around to posting it. I read it over briefly, and it seems okay…review?**

**By the way, a final note: I'm halfway to 200! I've reached 150 stories, and to celebrate this triumph, I'm taking requests for a limited amount of time! **

**Details:**

**-Message me if you have an idea for a one-shot, two-shot, songfic, or screenshot. (If it's a screenshot it will be posted on dA and I will provide a link to it on FF)  
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**-I WILL ONLY TAKE REQUESTS UNTIL FRIDAY AFTERNOON. I'M NOT TAKING REQUESTS PAST THIS FRIDAY, APRIL 6TH AT 6PM. Anything after that I am NOT going to do. After said date I will be working on updating my currently running stories. **

**-I will postpone updating current stories until the closing date. So don't expect Meeting Someone New to be updated until Friday or Saturday.  
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**-If I get an excessive amount of requests and I feel I cannot handle them all, I will choose my favorite three ideas and write them up/post on Friday morning/afternoon. **

**-I might be able to do videos, too, but they can't be too difficult, because I don't really know how to make very advanced videos. If you've seen some of my Youtube videos, they're only a series of screenshots and a song. If anyone has video requests, I will evaluate the difficulty level. If I can do it, it might take a day or two to show up.**

**-Each time I get a request I will PM you back with the link to the creation. **

**In regards to screenshots, I can do ANYTHING at all from season 1, thanks to it being on Netflix (and my ability to access Netflix from my laptop :3 ). If you want something from season 2, I can most certainly do anything from Heavy Mettle to Iron Man 2099 (with the exception of Control-Alt-Delete), and I think I can do the rest of the season, too. I'll notify you if I can't access the desired episode. **

**Obviously, the pairings that are easiest for me to work with are Tony and Pepper and Rhodey and an OC (you can create an OC if you want, or request that I make one) or Whitney. I can do friendship stuff between Tony and Rhodey, I can do stuff between Whitney and Obadiah...but if you want me to do any other pairings, like Pepper and Gene, Pepper and Happy, Tony and Whitney, etc., it won't be as easy, but I can do it if I need to. **

**That's all for now, so I leave you with my gratitude for everyone's support so far! I couldn't have made it this far without the support of the awesome reviews I get every day :D and I can't forget all the faves and story alerts, either! Thank you to all of you, I guess :D  
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